Was the Enterprise A actually the Yorktown?

I think there is plenty of reason to think that these ships are present at the moment. For one thing, Stone looking at the chart to determine where he can grab extra repair crew from suggests that those repair crews are local, not spread throughout the Federation.

Also the fact that this chart is labeled as "% COMPLETE" would seem to suggest that there is work currently happening on these vessels. Ships "still in need to receive essential upgrades" wouldn't have a progress bar like this. One would imagine ships in need would appear as a simple list, with no progress, seeing as how they are not yet being worked on. Doesn't make sense to send out a starship with only 12% of her refit competed, does it?

Besides, what business is it of Commodore Stone's what every ship's refit and repair needs are? It seems more likely to me that he is looking at a chart for just those ship's he is responsible for. I think it's interesting that Stone wears a red shirt. I like to assume that Mendez was still the actual C.O. of the base, but was gone for whatever reason and his "first officer" Stone was in charge while he was away. This might be supported by his title in the closing credits: Portmaster. Why would the portmaster need to know about everyone else's status? He really should just be focused on his own job, I think.

No, while I usually am a little annoyed whenever someone pedantically invokes Occam's Razor, in this case, I really do think that the chart representing those ships actually at the starbase being worked on makes the most reasonable sense. It's the simplest answer, given the context as I see it.

Here we have the pivotal scene where Scotty wants the Enterprise-D’s computer to recreate the command bridge of Kirk’s TOS Enterprise. Picard, like Scotty before him, enters through the viewscreen, chats with Scotty, has a quick look around and says “Constitution Class”.

There are several noticeable differences that tell me that this is not the bridge of the old USS Enterprise but in addition to this onecould of course be the bridge of a starship of the 16th design series or Constitution Class. A layman couldn’t tell the difference so Picard merely mistakes the bridge of a Constitution Class starship with the one of a [Enterprise] Starship Class.

Where it gets interesting is Scotty’s reaction “Aye. You're familiar with them?”

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This is just plain insane. It is utterly, completely absurd to claim that the bridge from Relics is not the Enterprise bridge. To anyone who isn't going over pictures of the set with a microscope to point out how they didn't perfectly replicate it for one scene in one episode, it looks identical to the TOS bridge. Meanwhile, you suppose that Scotty, Picard, and the Ent-D computer all completely mistook the bridge for that of another starship class entirely. How do you explain the fact that the holodeck, which presumably has access to Starfleet visual records, came up with the wrong ship?

“Trials and Tribble-ations” (DS9)

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Hey, Dax and Sisko are only Starfleet officers getting ready to go aboard the most famous ship in history, on a vital secret mission. I'm sure they didn't check the deck numbering at all. It's not like Dax didn't live through that time period or anything. Oh, wait, no. That again requires assuming the characters are complete idiots or that Starfleet somehow lost all records about the ship.

Sorry, but no amount of TNG-bashing on your part is going to change reality. Maybe the term was in flux back in the early TOS days, but at this point denying that it's what the ship's class is.

I like FJ's numbers as well, with a slight modification for Intrepid so that her number actually appears on the "Court Martial" chart. The only major sticking point for me is that darn 1017, which makes even less sense than Jein's 16xx numbers. That's why I tend to think that Constellation was an older, smaller ship that only superficially looked like the Constitution class. The old AMT model kit in the original version helped with this. Of course, TOS-R *didn't* help with this, but if I'm already ignoring the Jein registries used in TOS-R...

From an in-universe perspective, why would Starfleet bother remaking these older ships to look like Constitution class ships, rather than just installing upgraded weapons/sensors/whatever into their existing spaceframes?

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Agreed. Given that the refit of the 1701 is unique in the franchise - no other starship has ever been shown to be remodeled to that visual extent - we may wish to assume such things are rare. Or not, and we just never see them.

I'm on board with this. "Starship Class" works much better as a generic type designator. Starfleet just went from using the generic type class on their plaques in the 2240s, to using the actual nominal class of the ship on their plaques by whenever the Defiant was commissioned.

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I can live with this. I still kind of like Bob's suggestion that "Starship Class" means "class of the Starship's name" and the Enterprise was "really" Enterprise class all along, with the other members of the uberclass being Constitution. Maybe some Achernars and Bonhomme Richards just for the hell of it.

Is there any good reason to assume that the starship status chart from "Court Martial" only shows starships being repaired in orbit of the starbase?

NCC-1831 (formerly assumed to be Intrepid) is almost done, so why pull the repair crew off to start work on the Enterprise?

For all we know this is just the general Starfleet chart to indicate all starships that are still in need to receive essential upgrades.

Commodore Stone may be well aware of Intrepid's condition but a look at the "upgrade" chart tells him Enterprise badly needs these in addition to the repair work following the severe "ion storm".

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I think it is quite intentional that these were ships currently at the base, based on the context in which it was shown. Why would a starbase commander looking to repair a ship that is asking his facility for service give a crap about ships not at his base? Yet another reason why I dislike Mr. Jein's assumptions.

For a real world comparison, would the overseer at a modern Naval base care about the repair status of ships at another base?

I think there is plenty of reason to think that these ships are present at the moment. For one thing, Stone looking at the chart to determine where he can grab extra repair crew from suggests that those repair crews are local, not spread throughout the Federation.

Also the fact that this chart is labeled as "% COMPLETE" would seem to suggest that there is work currently happening on these vessels. Ships "still in need to receive essential upgrades" wouldn't have a progress bar like this. One would imagine ships in need would appear as a simple list, with no progress, seeing as how they are not yet being worked on. Doesn't make sense to send out a starship with only 12% of her refit competed, does it?

Besides, what business is it of Commodore Stone's what every ship's refit and repair needs are? It seems more likely to me that he is looking at a chart for just those ship's he is responsible for. I think it's interesting that Stone wears a red shirt. I like to assume that Mendez was still the actual C.O. of the base, but was gone for whatever reason and his "first officer" Stone was in charge while he was away. This might be supported by his title in the closing credits: Portmaster. Why would the portmaster need to know about everyone else's status? He really should just be focused on his own job, I think.

No, while I usually am a little annoyed whenever someone pedantically invokes Occam's Razor, in this case, I really do think that the chart representing those ships actually at the starbase being worked on makes the most reasonable sense. It's the simplest answer, given the context as I see it.

This is just plain insane. It is utterly, completely absurd to claim that the bridge from Relics is not the Enterprise bridge. To anyone who isn't going over pictures of the set with a microscope to point out how they didn't perfectly replicate it for one scene in one episode, it looks identical to the TOS bridge. Meanwhile, you suppose that Scotty, Picard, and the Ent-D computer all completely mistook the bridge for that of another starship class entirely. How do you explain the fact that the holodeck, which presumably has access to Starfleet visual records, came up with the wrong ship?

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While I agree with Bob that it's awfully odd that the computer didn't ask Scotty to specify which version of the bridge of the 1701 he wanted to see, it's clear to me that the production team did intend this to be the bridge of the ship during Kirk's 2265-2270 heyday. Though there were some differences with the partial set used, mostly due to budget and time as I recall, a still establishing shot was used that IIRC was straight out of "The Mark of Gideon."

I think we can chalk this up to "It's a holodeck. It's not a perfect recreation" and leave it at that.

Hey, Dax and Sisko are only Starfleet officers getting ready to go aboard the most famous ship in history, on a vital secret mission. I'm sure they didn't check the deck numbering at all. It's not like Dax didn't live through that time period or anything. Oh, wait, no. That again requires assuming the characters are complete idiots or that Starfleet somehow lost all records about the ship.

Sorry, but no amount of TNG-bashing on your part is going to change reality. Maybe the term was in flux back in the early TOS days, but at this point denying that it's what the ship's class is.

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I don't think it's necessarily bashing the sequel/spinoff series if you want to try to extrapolate original intent.

This is just plain insane. It is utterly, completely absurd to claim that the bridge from Relics is not the Enterprise bridge.

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It's no more "insane" than what many of us do here at the BBS, i.e. getting into tiny details of Star Trek. I think "mental gymnastics", as Albertese put it so well (and again. I think he'd made a great speechwriter), would be more appropriate.
In fact the differences are there and obvious

the touch panels of helm and navigator are different

these stairs down to the inner bridge core are different

Kirk's command chair is lacking intercom speaker

dedication plaque and alert indicator are to0 close together

and so on. Since my original objection (TOS creators' intent) was considered irrelevant and it's retroacive canon that decides, I therefore examined the retroactive canon and found no evidence. Interestingly, now we are back to intent, since canon didn't work out for the Constitution Class.

To anyone who isn't going over pictures of the set with a microscope to point out how they didn't perfectly replicate it for one scene in one episode, it looks identical to the TOS bridge.

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But it's okay to use a microscope to decipher the small print (!) of a small viewscreen display (!) which indicates the existence of a Constitution Starship Class and thus conjure up that the TOS Enterprise had to belong to this starship class?

Meanwhile, you suppose that Scotty, Picard, and the Ent-D computer all completely mistook the bridge for that of another starship class entirely. How do you explain the fact that the holodeck, which presumably has access to Starfleet visual records, came up with the wrong ship?

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Obviously the computer didn't have visual records of Pike's, Decker's or Spock's bridge, otherwise it would have asked Scotty for specifications because it couldn't possibly know which NCC-1701 Scotty was talking about.
It stands to reason that Scotty only got what the computer had to offer and this could have just as well been the similar looking bridge of a Constitution Class starship.

Hey, Dax and Sisko are only Starfleet officers getting ready to go aboard the most famous ship in history, on a vital secret mission. I'm sure they didn't check the deck numbering at all. It's not like Dax didn't live through that time period or anything. Oh, wait, no. That again requires assuming the characters are complete idiots or that Starfleet somehow lost all records about the ship.

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We do not know which other things Dax remembered other than the ones mentioned in the episode. But obviously she and/or Sisko didn't remember the correct deck numbering of the Enterprise which put O'Brien and Bashir in the hilarious situation I mentioned earlier.

At least those two admitted: "I don't know anything about this time period." (can't shake the feeling same did apply to some extent for the DS9 producers ).
Sisko knows what Kirk looks like, but not Dr. McCoy. Sisko heard about events in "Arena" but neither him or Dax really knew what happened in "The Trouble With Tribbles".
Essentially they both know bits and pieces but not enough to qualify as experts of Kirk's era.

Since I am also a big TNG fan, none of this has anything to do with bashing TNG. It's just when it came to reflect events in TOS, the late TNG producers (post-Roddenberry, post-Justman) just didn't do their TOS homework properly, IMO.

This is just plain insane. It is utterly, completely absurd to claim that the bridge from Relics is not the Enterprise bridge.

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It's no more "insane" than what many of us do here at the BBS, i.e. getting into tiny details of Star Trek. I think "mental gymnastics", as Albertese put it so well (and again. I think he'd made a great speechwriter), would be more appropriate.
In fact the differences are there and obvious

the touch panels of helm and navigator are different

these stairs down to the inner bridge core are different

Kirk's command chair is lacking intercom speaker

dedication plaque and alert indicator are to0 close together

and so on. Since my original objection (TOS creators' intent) was considered irrelevant and it's retroacive canon that decides, I therefore examined the retroactive canon and found no evidence. Interestingly, now we are back to intent, since canon didn't work out for the Constitution Class.

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So either the computer is stupid and produces the wrong ship bridge and Picard and Scotty(!!!!) are too stupid to pick up on this, or there are some cosmetic differences due to budgetary and time constraints.

To anyone who isn't going over pictures of the set with a microscope to point out how they didn't perfectly replicate it for one scene in one episode, it looks identical to the TOS bridge.

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But it's okay to use a microscope to decipher the small print (!) of a small viewscreen display (!) which indicates the existence of a Constitution Starship Class and thus conjure up that the TOS Enterprise had to belong to this starship class?

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I agree that using the viewscrens and "technical journals" that Scotty reads are a bit suspect.

Meanwhile, you suppose that Scotty, Picard, and the Ent-D computer all completely mistook the bridge for that of another starship class entirely. How do you explain the fact that the holodeck, which presumably has access to Starfleet visual records, came up with the wrong ship?

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Obviously the computer didn't have visual records of Pike's, Decker's or Spock's bridge, otherwise it would have asked Scotty for specifications because it couldn't possibly know which NCC-1701 Scotty was talking about.
It stands to reason that Scotty only got what the computer had to offer and this could have just as well been the similar looking bridge of a Constitution Class starship.

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Or else you're being overly nitpicky, since the bridge is amazingly close for a one-off set in an early 90s TV production.

Hey, Dax and Sisko are only Starfleet officers getting ready to go aboard the most famous ship in history, on a vital secret mission. I'm sure they didn't check the deck numbering at all. It's not like Dax didn't live through that time period or anything. Oh, wait, no. That again requires assuming the characters are complete idiots or that Starfleet somehow lost all records about the ship.

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We do not know which other things Dax remembered other than the ones mentioned in the episode. But obviously she and/or Sisko didn't remember the correct deck numbering of the Enterprise which put O'Brien and Bashir in the hilarious situation I mentioned earlier.

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I'm sorry, but I'll take the clearly and explicit statements by Picard, Riker, and Sisko, not to mention the massive amounts of fanon (since we do for the Miranda class name anyway) over a bridge plaque, ancillary materials in a period when all of the world-building details were in flux (Lithium-cracking station anyone), a fuzzy sign in TWOK.

While Bob Justman, Matt Jeffries, and Gene Roddenberry created Trek, it's not just their playground. You don't get to dismiss all of the other works just because it disagrees with a minor point of early intent when much of that early intent later disagreed with its own show.

NCC-1831 (formerly assumed to be Intrepid) is almost done, so why pull the repair crew off to start work on the Enterprise?

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Not is "almost" done, is done. That ship's bar goes all the way to 100%, and there's even a little green "completion" indicator at the end of the chart. This is one of the major arguments showing that Jein's number assignment is wrong. He assigns that number to Intrepid, but that ship is complete and would therefore not have repair crews still working on it, so that ship cannot be Intrepid.

(I tend to think of Intrepid as 1709, since it's close to FJ's number, but 1703 is also a viable alternative.)

I don't believe Mike Okuda was making a conscious decision showing Intrepid as NCC-1631 in TOS-R, but the moment he did he accidentally gave this starship status chart a different and, IMHO, better meaning.

Bob

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I thought he gave Intrepid that number in TOS-R because that's what he used for the ship in the Encyclopedia, and he used it there because he thought that's what the number on the chart was? So I think it was probably a conscious decision, but he thought he was being consistent with a number that appeared on the chart.

So either the computer is stupid and produces the wrong ship bridge and Picard and Scotty(!!!!) are too stupid to pick up on this, or there are some cosmetic differences due to budgetary and time constraints.

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None of them is "stupid" in-universe and I didn't say that:

The computer obviously wasn't fed the relevant parameters of Pike's, Decker's or Spock's bridge. So how can we be sure it was fed with the parameters of Kirk's bridge?

Picard, like Sisko, knows bits and pieces of that era but is apparently not that much into Federation ships (obviously he wanted to start a conversation with Scotty. Why didn't he use the Constellation Class as a topic? Surely, Scotty as an engineer would have liked to learn how this particular ship design actually performed and Picard could have told him all about that, having been the captain of the Stargazer).

And Scotty's memory was affected by having stayed too long in the pattern buffer, add to this the intoxicating effects of alcohol of which he apparently had plenty prior to entering the holodeck. This also seems evident when he talks about having served on "a freighter, a cruiser, and a starship". NCC-1701 was a cruiser, so it's like he said he served on "a freighter, a starship, and a starship".

I agree that the differences are mostly owed to budgetary and time constraints, but now we are talking about real-life and intentions (and no longer about nitpicky canon) and at least on this level, for the reasons I provided, "first comes, first serves" rules, IMO.

I'm sorry, but I'll take the clearly and explicit statements by Picard, Riker, and Sisko, not to mention the massive amounts of fanon (since we do for the Miranda class name anyway) over a bridge plaque, ancillary materials in a period when all of the world-building details were in flux (Lithium-cracking station anyone), a fuzzy sign in TWOK.

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How reliable these "explicit" statements (Riker? Did I miss one?) are I've tried to illustrate. Now either fanon or canon is relevant.
"Miranda Class" fills a previously uncharted gap, "Constitution Class" tries to erase "Enterprise Starship Class". That's the decisive difference.
I agree that some things during the beginning were in a state of flux, but "starship class" was there in the beginning, fixed in the middle of TOS (Bob Justman's "Enterprise Starship Class"), hold on to in the Official TMP Blueprints ("new Enterprise Class") and put onscreen in ST II (and much better discernible than the "Consitution Class" small print in "The Trouble With Tribbles").

While Bob Justman, Matt Jeffries, and Gene Roddenberry created Trek, it's not just their playground. You don't get to dismiss all of the other works just because it disagrees with a minor point of early intent when much of that early intent later disagreed with its own show.

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TOS was their playground and theirs alone, nothing will ever change that. If the post-TOS producers decided that the Starfleet registry system changed and that people in the 24th Century use "Constitution Class" as a colloquialism I have absolutely no problems with that. But it cannot possibly retroactively change the intentions of the original creators and I think Matt Jefferies statements in the early 2000's are a testament to that.

@ QuinnTV

Very interesting idea. Definitely a possibility that cannot be ruled out.

I think, given that the establishing shot was straight from a TOS episode, that we really should not sweat the details on this one. Watch it on a 22" CRT like you had in the 90's and pay attention to Picard and Scotty, like you're supposed to, and you won't notice the differences. There are countless shots in TOS where, if you really study what's going on there, the sets have been cheated all over the place to make the camera angles better. Do we really want to take everything on-screen as The Literal Truth Of The Faithful's Canon? The only detail that is pretty glaring to me is the edge of the upper deck being carpeted and going down as a straight wall to the lower deck. On the actual set this was black and had an overhang which, frankly, looked better than the TNG version. But, still, this is only visible in a couple shots and is easily overlooked.

It's been years, so maybe I don't remember right, but seems like I read way back then that the bridge section they used was actually built by fans somewhere for a convention or something and the TNG production borrowed it? Does that sound right to anyone else?

At any rate, Star Trek in real life is a television show and its production was sometimes hampered by the realities of real life. Given what a good job they did every week putting together feature quality material for us to be entertained by, I think we can cut them a little slack on this sorta thing.

The fact that they bothered to do a TOS-style anything is, to me, a sign that they had a respect and an affection for the original material. Sure the little things might have gotten misplaced a little, but, seriously, I give them credit for trying.

NCC-1831 (formerly assumed to be Intrepid) is almost done, so why pull the repair crew off to start work on the Enterprise?

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Not is "almost" done, is done. That ship's bar goes all the way to 100%, and there's even a little green "completion" indicator at the end of the chart. This is one of the major arguments showing that Jein's number assignment is wrong. He assigns that number to Intrepid, but that ship is complete and would therefore not have repair crews still working on it, so that ship cannot be Intrepid.

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You are right. But if the ship is done, why does it still appear on that chart?
Maybe the the extra bar indicates that NCC-1831 now undergoes transformation from TOS-style to TMP refit-style (that'd be something, Miranda Class undergoing refit procedures, first ).

There's one major issue I have with this chart just showing repair performances at this starbase.

According to the context featured in "Court-Martial" the Enterprise has just recently arrived and Kirk apparently hasn't been to the starbase club, yet.

Yet, the chart clearly shows that there has been considerable "completion" progress on the Enterprise!

Considering there are three to four more days coming before repairs are complete, this "repair status" chart would then indicate that Enterprise had already been there for over a week!

Sorry guys, that's most definitely not what I can conclude from the introduction scenes of "Court-Martial", hence my suggestion we are looking at upgrade packages.

It's been years, so maybe I don't remember right, but seems like I read way back then that the bridge section they used was actually built by fans somewhere for a convention or something and the TNG production borrowed it? Does that sound right to anyone else?

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As I recall the story, I had heard that the TOS bridge set was built by Paramount, but they had a limited budget that was shared with a Dyson sphere exterior and interior, as well as the miniature of the USS Jenolan (a redress of the Executive Shuttle miniature seen in Star Trek VI), plus its corresponding set. This resulted in only a few walls of the bridge being made, plus command chair and center console. This is why when both Scotty and Picard step into the holodeck and see the bridge (Scotty greenscreened in) from the wide common filming angle, they were really standing in front of the engineering station and turbolift, the only two walls that seemed to have been built and were ever fully shown throughout the entire scene. They just removed the dedication plaque under the red alert light (built much too wide) to make it look like a different wall.

Same here. In fact I remember reading that they couldn´t have shot the holodeck-scene if it hadn´t been for that fan-built section (because the budget on "Relics" was at its limit already), and that everyone involved was really happy that they got the opportunity to use this set and shoot the scene. It was in a "Relics"-special issue of the Official Fan Club Magazine, IIRC.

But I may be misremembering of course - it´s been about 20 years since I then, and this brain is starting to get old

I really sbould not join this thread, but.. Given all that Starfleet saves off seemingly for centuries, how can the holodeck get the 1701 bridge incorrect? Or is the lack of a specific stardate that produces a "synthetic" bridge? Scotty is drunk and might not notice anything off but in the engineering section. Picard probably does not remember enough of the minutia.

Actually, has there ever been an exact and accurate portrayal of a historic setting in the holodeck? Our protagonists wouldn't be able to tell right from wrong unless it was a contemporary item.

I think it stands to reason that the only available artifact from which to create this holodeck illusion was a Constitution Class starship, in particular the one from the fleet museum Picard mentioned, but not the TOS Enterprise.

@ Mario de Monti & QuinnTV

You got it right. It was the special "Relics" issue (# 90) of the fan club magazine. From his own fan made bridge, Steve Horch had saved the chair, the helm/nav console and two chairs. Everything else was reconstructed based on original pictures. They even invited Bob Justman to check it out and he had to tell them, that they got the floor carpet wrong - the original one was grey but not brown.

NCC-1831 (formerly assumed to be Intrepid) is almost done, so why pull the repair crew off to start work on the Enterprise?

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Not is "almost" done, is done. That ship's bar goes all the way to 100%, and there's even a little green "completion" indicator at the end of the chart. This is one of the major arguments showing that Jein's number assignment is wrong. He assigns that number to Intrepid, but that ship is complete and would therefore not have repair crews still working on it, so that ship cannot be Intrepid.

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You are right. But if the ship is done, why does it still appear on that chart?

Bob

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Perhaps the yard work* is done on the Intrepid and the green bar indicates a period of quality assurance and crew training. RL ships and crews go through such a period after time in the yard.

As to why pull a crew off the Intrepid to work on the Enterprise, the Enterprise is there on an unscheduled visit, which means she should be doing starship stuff elsewhere. The Intrepid is probably scheduled for this layover, which means she has no pressing need to be elsewhere. She's where she's supposed to be and a few days delay may not be a s big a deal.

*(Yard working meaning repairs, maintenance and upgrades: there was always a little bit each every time the ship I served on was dockside.)

You are right. But if the ship is done, why does it still appear on that chart?

There's one major issue I have with this chart just showing repair performances at this starbase.

According to the context featured in "Court-Martial" the Enterprise has just recently arrived and Kirk apparently hasn't been to the starbase club, yet.

Yet, the chart clearly shows that there has been considerable "completion" progress on the Enterprise!

Considering there are three to four more days coming before repairs are complete, this "repair status" chart would then indicate that Enterprise had already been there for over a week!

Sorry guys, that's most definitely not what I can conclude from the introduction scenes of "Court-Martial", hence my suggestion we are looking at upgrade packages.

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There's one fairly simple solution to this, which happens to be how I've always thought about it anyway...

I've always liked to think of it being more like a "health meter" for any ships present at the starbase - here are all the ships present, here's the level of functionality on a 100% scale. I've never felt that the bar accurately represented how much work had been done, inasmuch as how functional the ship was.

You got it right. It was the special "Relics" issue (# 90) of the fan club magazine. From his own fan made bridge, Steve Horch had saved the chair, the helm/nav console and two chairs. Everything else was reconstructed based on original pictures. They even invited Bob Justman to check it out and he had to tell them, that they got the floor carpet wrong - the original one was grey but not brown.

Perhaps the yard work* is done on the Intrepid and the green bar indicates a period of quality assurance and crew training. RL ships and crews go through such a period after time in the yard.

As to why pull a crew off the Intrepid to work on the Enterprise, the Enterprise is there on an unscheduled visit, which means she should be doing starship stuff elsewhere. The Intrepid is probably scheduled for this layover, which means she has no pressing need to be elsewhere. She's where she's supposed to be and a few days delay may not be a s big a deal.

*(Yard working meaning repairs, maintenance and upgrades: there was always a little bit each every time the ship I served on was dockside.)

Apparently and according to ST II NCC-1701 was a member of the "Enterprise Starship Class" (the refit according to the Official TMP Blueprints was a "Starship II Class" Enterprise) and NCC-1701-A was a member of the "Constitution Starship [II] Class" according to ST VI.

I think it's rather simply and there's really nothing wrong with the TOS dedication plaque, as it contains the vital information: "(U.S.S.) Enterprise Starship Class".
I don't know what the dedication plaque of the sister ships would read, but for the class leader all the information is contained.

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So, the lead ship in each class might have a dedication plaque that reads "Starship Class" to note that it was the primary ship in the class, but the following sister ships would have "[lead ship's name] Class".

"Starship Class" could mean "this vessel is the one for which this design batch/group is named".

Apparently and according to ST II NCC-1701 was a member of the "Enterprise Starship Class" (the refit according to the Official TMP Blueprints was a "Starship II Class" Enterprise) and NCC-1701-A was a member of the "Constitution Starship [II] Class" according to ST VI.

I think it's rather simply and there's really nothing wrong with the TOS dedication plaque, as it contains the vital information: "(U.S.S.) Enterprise Starship Class".
I don't know what the dedication plaque of the sister ships would read, but for the class leader all the information is contained.

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So, the lead ship in each class might have a dedication plaque that reads "Starship Class" to note that it was the primary ship in the class, but the following sister ships would have "[lead ship's name] Class".

"Starship Class" could mean "this vessel is the one for which this design batch/group is named".

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Hmm, that theoretically could work. Is there a visual catalogue for the plaques on other lead ships?